A recent announcement from Harvard University regarding Internetfile trading has led Northwestern officials to investigate theuniversity’s policy for dealing with students who illegally shareand download music.
Harvard will shut off Internet access for one year to studentswho are caught sharing copyrighted songs more than once, said KevinDavis, coordinator of Residential Computing at Harvard.
But Northwestern’s policy, which has been in place for the pastyear, varies on a case-by-case basis, said Tom Board, director ofTechnology Support Services.
Harvard’s policy, announced April 10, promotes that all schoolsshould disable the Internet access of students who infringe uponthe 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Board said. The actholds Internet users liable for sharing copyrighted files.
Board said he believes NU is in compliance with the act, butthat NU is investigating the issue.
NU receives dozens of complaints every week from recordingindustry companies, such as the Recording Industry Association ofAmerica, regarding file sharing, Board said.
The recording industry is becoming more persistent in punishingstudents who illegally share files online, he said. For example,the recording industry association filed suit on April 3 againstfour students, at Michigan Technological University, PrincetonUniversity and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, for allegedlysharing more than one million songs through the Internet.
At NU, some students who have been caught sharing files have hadtheir Internet shut down after receiving a warning from InformationTechnology.
Norbert Wroblewski, a McCormick freshman, said he has more than100 Nirvana songs on his computer, and was caught sharing filesFall Quarter. NUIT shut off Wroblewski’s Internet access until hedeleted the illegal files, but he said he has continued to downloadmusic and movies onto his computer. Wroblewski said he is notworried he will be caught again.
“You just have to watch out and limit yourself,” he said.
David Macedonia, a McCormick freshman who lives in the same hallas Wroblewski, also got caught for file sharing in the fall.Macedonia had to write a letter of apology to NUIT and read overthe copyright guidelines posted on the NUIT Web site.
“Pretty much everyone on our floor learned from our mistakes,”Macedonia said.
Macedonia said he still downloads movies onto his computer, buttries to make sure he isn’t sharing them with other Internetusers.
Board declined to comment on what happens to second-timeoffenders at NU.
At Harvard, Davis said the university feels a responsibility topunish second-time offenders because the students are operatingthrough the school’s servers. He said, though, that stopping filesharing is a challenge for all universities.
“It’s been difficult to cut off the spigot on file sharing,” hesaid
Although Harvard is not the only university that stands behindthis decision, Davis said, each university has its own policy ofenforcement.
“It’s certainly something where different campuses have takendifferent approaches,” Davis said. “Each university faces a numberof different factors when facing these decisions.”
